Stephen Haseler

Haseler was not only a member of the SDP, but a founding member of the Social Democratic Alliance which preceded it. An academic who, as a London councillor, had become a vociferous critic of changes within the Labour Party in the Seventies, Haseler had spent some time at the third big Washington think-tank, the Heritage Foundation. With its money he had helped set up in London the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, a forceful and well-resourced foe of both the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Party in the Eighties. Haseler gains just one mention from Crewe and King as 'a little-known outsider, a self-styled "rank and file" candidate' for the SDP presidency in 1981.'

Now it may be true that Haseler is not the important figure in starting the SDP ball rolling CIA asset Brian Crozier claims in his 1993 book Free Agent , but there can be little doubt that he had a considerable transatlantic role before and during the life of the SDP. [1]